Campaign Finance

“It pains me to say it, but I don’t think [the statement itself] is a legal problem,” Common Cause’s Paul Ryan told Score (Ryan repeatedly argued that he believed the creation of America First Policies and America First Action was illegal because of their ties to Trump’s orbit while he was a federal candidate). “Pointing to a super PAC and saying, ‘That’s the one I approve of’ doesn’t break the law.”

“In a perfect world, members of Congress who serve on committees that oversee or regulate specific industries wouldn’t be able to fundraise or accept campaign contributions from those industries,” said Aaron Scherb, the director of legislative affairs at Common Cause.Scherb added that participating in the imperfect system doesn’t mean that Nadler or other lawmakers are being bought off, but there’s a “perceived conflict of interest that’s created.”“For many Americans, our corrosive fund-raising system calls into question whether members of Congress are acting in the public interest, or for some private financial interest,” Scherb said.

“The Special Counsel concluded that the promised ‘documents and information that would incriminate Hillary’ constituted a ‘thing of value,’” the complaint supplement from Common Cause, Campaign Legal Center, and Democracy 21 states. “And that Trump Jr.—and potentially Manafort and Kushner—solicited such a contribution from a person known to be a foreign national.”The supplement concludes: “In other words, the Special Counsel concluded that, at a minimum, Trump Jr. violated the ban on soliciting contributions from foreign nationals.”

Today, Common Cause, the Campaign Legal Center, and Democracy 21 filed a supplement to a complaint filed in July 2017 against President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign committee for soliciting contributions from foreign nationals in the form of opposition research offered by Russians. Although Special Counsel Robert Mueller declined to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump Jr., Mueller provided a roadmap by which the Federal Election Commission (FEC) could pursue civil penalties.

On July 10, 2017, Common Cause filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that Donald Trump Jr., in his role with the Trump campaign, illegally solicited a political contribution from a foreign national—in the form of opposition research information he believed would be damaging to the Hillary Clinton campaign. Trump Jr. admitted to The New York Times that on June 9, 2016, he met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer who had promised him “damaging information about Hillary Clinton.” By that time his father had already secured the Republican nomination for President and Trump campaign chairman Paul J. Manfort also attended the meeting at Trump Tower as did Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. Trump Jr. issued the statement to say that he had not in fact obtained the promised information but instead had been misled and lobbied on specific U.S.-Russian foreign policy issues. Nonetheless Trump Jr.’s meeting constitutes an illegal solicitation of a foreign national “contribution” by him and the Trump campaign. Federal campaign finance law defines “contribution” to include anything of value given for the purpose of influencing a federal election. And federal law prohibits any person from soliciting or receiving a contribution from a foreign national. On July 13, 2017, together with the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 amended and expanded its July 10 complaint, adding more facts and alleged violations. On April 30, 2019, Common Cause, the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 filed a supplement to its 2017 complaint with the FEC, to include new facts and legal analysis from Special Counsel Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Mueller's report underscores the validity of the allegations made in 2017 by Common Cause, the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21.

Mueller made some other questionable choices. While Trump Jr. could have been charged with illegally coordinating with the Russians to make an illegal foreign expenditure, Mueller describes the law defining coordination as too uncertain. In fact, as Common Cause’s Paul S. Ryan explains in this thread, there is both a federal statute and case law defining the term, and Trump Jr.’s conduct seems to fall within it.